Bethel Pride

PRIDEB E T H E L

FROM THE DESK OF...

Tom Seigel Superintendent

This school year, our district is making mental health services more accessible for students.

With the introduction of Hazel Health, our school counselors and social workers will now have quicker access to mental health services when they need to refer a student. With parent or guardian permission, Hazel’s online health services will give students the chance to speak with a mental or physical health professional directly from their homes using their district iPads.

This new service will be invaluable for our kids, and because your votes have renewed our Technology Levy since 2014, the iPads students use for their school work will now also be used for needed telehealth appointments. Thank you, voters!

Local voters are also responsible for our school construction bond passing in 2019. That bond is funding a number of new schools in our district. Just this year we opened Katherine G. Johnson Elementary School and Phase II of the new Challenger High School. The new Naches Trail Elementary School is already under construction and we have begun work on our 19th elementary school that will be built in the Lipoma Firs Community off of Meridian.

This is a district we all should be proud of. In fact, just this year the Bethel School District was recognized on two prestigious Forbes lists. For the third year in a row, we were recognized by Forbes as one of America’s Best Employers By State. Not only did we make the list, but Bethel is one of only four school districts in Washington that did, coming in at number 41 of the 60 employers listed.

We were also ranked on Forbes' America's Best Midsize Employers list. Bethel is listed as 190th in the country, 17th when you sort by Education, and 5th when you sort by K-12 School District. That’s quite an accomplishment!

To see why we are receiving this national recognition, I have to look no further than our first day of school. I want to thank all of our staff for such a great kick off to the new school year!

From everything I saw and everyone I talked to, it is obvious that the hard work, preparation and professionalism our staff brought with them has paid off with a very smooth start to the 2022/23 school year.

This is going to be a great year.

On the cover: Students and staff were eager to kick off the new school year together.

Historyof Bethelthe new

The path from empty field to thriving school can be long and fraught with setbacks.

No project better exemplifies that journey than the new Bethel High School. When our School Board voted to purchase 54 acres of land from Rainier View Christian Church in 2009, the hope was that we would be able to build a much needed fourth comprehensive high school on the site in a matter of years.

As we all know, it didn’t work out that way.

So what was the big holdup, and why haven’t we built the new Bethel High School yet?

First, the property wasn’t zoned for a high school in 2009. District leaders immediately began working with Rainier View on a Comprehensive Plan Amendment application to have the property rezoned from Rural Farm to R-10. When the county approved the rezone in 2012, the district applied for a plat amendment and boundary line

As part of preparing the new BHS site, Graham Fire & Rescue trained in the existing buildings on the property before burning them to the ground.

adjustment, which wasn’t approved until 2013.

The Pierce County Council eventually approved a plan to build a high school on the land, but complaints filed with the state’s Growth Management Act Hearing Board delayed the project once again.

After years of back and forth, Governor Jay Inslee finally signed a bill into law in 2017 that allowed Bethel to build a school on the site, despite it being located about a mile outside Pierce County’s urban growth boundary.

So, with all the governmental hurdles overcome, we were finally ready to build a school. All that was left was passing a school construction bond. A bond to build the school failed with voters in February 2018, and again in November of 2018.

The bond finally passed in 2019, and the district’s planning and construction teams immediately began work on the new school.

Then, just as plans were being made to construct the school, updates to a Pierce County Stormwater Manual delayed the project once again. The updates reflected the evolution of “best available science” and resulted in development standards that are different than were the District purchased the property in 2009.

The changes to the Stormwater Manual included new, more stringent threshold methodologies to determine if the site’s stormwater would impact a “Category One Wetland,” which is located in the southeast corner of the new Bethel High School site.

In the district's new podcast, Sara Coccia, the district’s Director of

Bethel High School

Construction and Planning, said her team had finalized all the modeling and started to develop a stormwater system. She said she planned on getting those updated documents and designs to the county in the fall, including our conditional use permit application.

“These things take time and we want to get the school open as quickly as possible, but we’ve got to do everything we can to make sure we are protecting the site and the large class one wetland on that site,” she said.

More than 13 years after purchasing the land, we are excited to begin construction on the project late next year or in early 2024. The construction timeline is 27 months, with an anticipated opening in the fall of 2026.

Elementary #19

Our planning and design teams are also hard at work on what will soon be Bethel’s 19th elementary school.

The 64,000-square-foot school will be located in the Lipoma Firs community and will be a walkable, neighborhood school. It will house nearly 500 students in 24 classrooms.

A vision statement for the new school states: “Bethel Elementary #19 will be the bright, open, and fun heart of the community, empowering all learners through a culture of belonging and

connection. The learning will be enhanced through flexibility and functionality, inspiring this supportive culture of the whole child.”

Construction crews will break ground on the project in 2023 and look to have it completed in 2024.

NEW Naches Trail Elementary

When our construction bond passed in 2019, Naches Trail Elementary was slated to get a complete remodel and expansion. But a cost analysis determined it would actually be more expensive to modernize the current Naches Trail than it would be to build a new school.

The new school site is being prepared and the team is excited to see the building “go vertical” this fall.

The 77,000-square foot school will house 41 general classrooms and is scheduled to be ready for students in the fall of 2023.

It's great to see you!

30 Years of Summer Institute

This year we celebrated a milestone with our 30th year of Summer Institute.

Year in and year out, this unique professional development event gives our educators a chance to learn and grow in their craft with the most upto-date classroom training. Summer Institute focuses on initiatives that are relevant and broad in scope to prepare the majority of our staff for the new school year.

Every class offered at Summer Institute serves one overarching purpose: Ensuring all of our students have the most rigorous, equitable education possible.

“It is really important that students are at the heart of all of our work and it’s the lens by which we lead everything,” said Shawn Simpson, our Secondary Director of Teaching and

Learning.

Bethel Middle School teacher Daniel Magin attended his sixth Summer Institute this year, and he said the sessions give teachers a chance to learn about topics that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to.

“It’s a great way for us to develop our skills while also moving together as a district and growing skills that will help our students,” he said.

Camas Prairie Elementary Principal Melissa Munson-Merritt has attended Summer Institute as both an administrator and a teacher, and she said the sessions are valuable for both roles.

“As a teacher, you dig in and figure out what’s going to be best for you and your classroom,” she said. “As an administrator, you're always focused

on how we can get better. There’s no "I" in team. How can we get better as a team, because we all support all of our students.”

For years, Summer Institute was held at a single school in the district. That has changed over the past several years, and many teachers are now able to attend sessions at their own school, which gives them a chance to work together and build relationships with their coworkers.

“It gives them a great opportunity for breakout conversations, to process the information that they’re learning, and to meet as PLC groups. Because we know how important it is to learn together and to be able to launch these initiatives together,” said Andrea Landes, Bethel’s Executive Director of Special Services.

From Epipens to Earthquakes

Health, safety and security are always a priority

As a school district, our primary job is to teach students. While we’re focused on education, there are three prerequisites that must be in place before we can get down to that business.

Those three things are health, safety

and security.

Working alongside our district SROs (Pierce County Deputies serving as School Resource Officers), principals and other school administrators spent time this summer reviewing and learning about the wide variety

of health, safety and security measures they might encounter during the school year. From Epipens and inhalers to earthquakes and the eruption of Mount Rainier, they learned what resources were available and how best to use them in the event of an emergency.

Security has always been a priority here in Bethel. We were the first district in the state to have a badgein system at our buildings to ensure that every person in our schools is supposed to be there.

Bethel also employs five SROs, and Director of Security Bryan Streleski said their presence in the district serves many purposes.

“We want them to help protect us and give us the plans and the tools to keep us safe on a daily basis,” he said.

The SROs also help to build relationships throughout the district, whether it’s with staff, students or community members. Building relationships is something Superintendent Tom Seigel said is mission critical for staff at all levels.

“So if students hear of somebody that could potentially do harm to themselves or to others, they report that to an adult they trust,” he said.

Health, safety and security happen at all levels of our district. Spanaway Elementary paraeducator Lisa Sivertson helps students cross the road safely on their way to school.

This year our district is launching a new health services program called Hazel Health, which will ensure that all Bethel students, from preschool through 12th grade, will have access to ondemand mental and physical telehealth services all year long.

With parent or guardian permission, students can speak with a Hazel mental or physical health professional from their home. Appointments are available on weekdays before and after school.

These telehealth services will be available at absolutely no cost to families.

Mental health services include:

• Scheduled short-term therapy visits for coping with everything from anxiety, depression, and grief to peer and family relationships and bullying.

• Referrals to local providers for continuity of care.

• Communication with families, local health providers, and school staff.

On-demand physical health services include:

• Medical treatment for stomach aches, headaches, sprained ankles, asthma concerns, and everything in between.

• Hazel providers can send medication prescriptions to local pharmacies.

• Coordination with family physicians.

More Information on how to access Hazel can be found by visiting my.hazel.co/bethelsd.

We are grateful to work with Hazel Health to help increase access to the kinds of supports that meet the needs of our students, especially when it comes to mental health supports.

Many people think that when we talk about “mental health” we mean having a mental disorder, but Director of Behavioral Health Elissa Dornan said that’s not the case, and that people are now beginning to let go of that stigma.

“The pandemic helped us get to a point, I think collectively, where we could say, ‘You know what? It’s okay to not be okay,’” she said.

“What’s not okay is to sit with it and feel like you can’t get help or get support, or do anything about it.”

When school counselors or social workers need to refer a student to a mental health professional, the wait time is anywhere from three to nine months. But with Hazel Health, that wait time is going to change to two to three weeks.

You can learn more about Hazel Health and our focus on mental health in the district on Episode 6 of our podcast: bethelsd.org/ podcast

It's okay to not be okay New mental health supports now available to all students hazel

CRISIS SUPPORT

SUICIDE PREVENTION-NATIONAL SUICIDE LIFELINE (24/7)

1-800-273-TALK or 1-800-273-8255 Services available in English and Spanish

PIERCE COUNTY MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS LINE (24/7)

Call: 1-800-576-7764 Text "HEAL" to 741741 TDD: 253-798-4349 Non-crisis Recovery Support Line: 1-877-780-5222, 3 p.m. - 11 p.m.

GREATER LAKES MENTAL HEALTH Counseling services for adults and children with medicaid coverage (253) 581-7020

CENTER FOR DISCOVERY (855) 399-0242

CONSEJO COUNSELING Organization specializing in substance abuse for adolescents (253) 285-4750

WASHINGTON'S MENTAL HEALTH REFERRAL SERVICE FOR CHILDREN AND TEENS

Complete online request 1-833-303-5437

LGBTQ HELPLINE

1-866-4-U-TREVOR (1-866-488-7386) Text "START" to 678-678

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE (WA. STATE) 1-800-562-6025 (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.)

CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES (DSHS)

If you suspect child abuse or neglect, call 1-866-ENDHARM (363-4276)

REBUILDING HOPE SEXUAL ASSAULT CENTER OF PIERCE COUNTY 253-474-7273 or Toll Free 1-800-756-7273 (24/7)

RUNAWAY SAFELINE (24/7) Call 1-800-RUNAWAY (786-2929)

Another year, another clean audit! BUDGET 101

Our district just went through the annual audit process with the state, and representatives from the Auditor's Office presented their findings at a recent School Board meeting.

The state Auditor's Office provides transparent, independent examinations of every school district’s budget. This year the Auditor's Office did three different audits on our district: an Accountability Audit, a Financial Audit, and a Federal Grant Compliance audit. And the result was the same for all three.

“I’m pleased to report that we’re issuing an unmodified, also known as a ‘clean,’ opinion,” Assistant State Auditor Sarah Childers reported to the School Board. “This is exactly the opinion you want – the one we’re looking for.”

Why do other Pierce County districts get more money than Bethel?

“Regionalization” is extra money the state gives to school districts based on their property values. The property values currently in use are from 2017, and obviously a lot has happened in the housing market since then.

Since 2017, Bethel has been getting the short end of the stick when it comes to regionalization. While our neighboring school districts get 6% or 12% extra money each year, Bethel gets 0%.

Six or 12 percent may not sound like much, but we're talking about millions of dollars that other districts are getting but we are not. For example, if Bethel got 6% Regionalization, the district would receive an estimated $7 million dollars more than we are getting now. If we got 12%, we'd receive an estimated $13.4 million.

School Board Director Marcus Young called regionalization inequitable, especially when it comes to compensating staff. “My mama used to call this, and my grandma used to call this, ‘Keeping up with the Joneses.’ When you only make pennies and peanuts, but you’re trying to shop and live like someone who makes more money than you.”

Director Young said he respects the role of unions as they negotiate for their members, but he said when it

comes to salary negotiations, “The bare bones fact is, that you have districts who are able to negotiate with money that doesn’t exist in this district. And yet, still we’ve been trying to hold ourselves together by still negotiating like the Joneses to make sure we keep good staff in our district.”

Unfortunately this has led to deficit spending in the district, which the Board had their eye on as they approved this year’s budget.

This year the Department of Revenue is supposed to come up with a new Median Home Value which will include average values by school district. Alongside that, Superintendent Tom Seigel and others have been pushing to have the state reevaluate the inequities of regionalization as soon as possible.

2022

Consistency is Key

Whether he’s training soldiers or teaching middle schoolers, Hakeem Young says he was born to teach. This midwest native was babysitting for neighbors when he was just eight years old during his formative years in Missouri. He said kids have always gravitated towards him. After graduating high school and college, he served three years in the Army and then made his way to Spanaway Lake High School, where he worked as an ILC paraeducator before getting his teaching certification.

This is Young's fifth year teaching math at Spanaway Middle School. He’s also the Spanaway Lake Girls Wrestling Head Coach and Assistant Football Coach, and the Spanaway Middle School Head Football Coach. Young says being a coach means you’re both a mentor and a teacher – something he takes very seriously, along with being a consistent presence in student’s lives.

When he first started coaching, Young said it was hard to make a connection with some of the student athletes who had seen other role models float in and out of their lives. To make a connection with those kids, Young said he knew consistency was key.

“They see me in sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade. Now they go to high school, they see me for sports, so I’m still on their case about grades. So now, every single day, ‘How’s your grades? How are you doing? What’s going on? Do you need anything? How’s mom and dad?’ I make that connection. That’s a seven year connection almost for some of these kids,” he said.

Building those relationships and having that connection and consistency leads right to the graduation stage, the importance of which is something he imparts on his students frequently.

“I want you to graduate so you have the opportunity to go to some type of secondary education,” he tells his students. Whether it’s a two or four year college, a trade school, apprenticeship program, or serving in the military, that high school diploma is the key students need to open all of those doors.

Remembering 9/11

“This is an opportunity for you to reflect and perhaps to be challenged, to be the best person you can be. Whether that is to be a good citizen here in school, or in the community, or perhaps take a path that leads you to service, to help defend others. Whether as a deputy sheriff, or firefighter, or member of the military, or however you want to serve the common good.”

- Superintendent Tom Seigel

In honor of the anniversary of 9/11, staff, students and first responders joined together for a ceremony at Bethel High School. A joint JROTC color guard with cadets from BHS, GKHS and SLHS participated in the ceremony, and guest speaker Lt. Col. Gerry Resmondo from JBLM addressed the crowd, honoring the lives lost on September 11, 2001, as well as past and present first responders and military members.

School

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Employers by State

of America’s Best Employers

State.

one of only four school districts in Washington that did, coming in at number 41 of the 60 employers listed! That's higher than Amazon and the State of Washington!

only did we make the list, but Bethel

year

were also ranked on Forbes' America's Best Midsize Employers

in the country

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Bethel is listed as:

Bethel School District No. 403

176th St. E., Spanaway, WA 98387-8335

800-2000 | www.bethelsd.org

Bethel School District Resident

org. U.S. Postage

No.

WA 98387

EPISODES

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